Chekhov’s Mistess

In Praise of Ignorance, Part One

Dorothy just wrote about books that repel and compel her at the same time because of their difficulty. Most avid readers probably feel that way about certain books, but I think that reading difficult books have taught me that it’s okay NOT to understand.

While I don’t want to manipulate Dorothy’s intent, when she says of Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons “But it’s the kind of book you just let wash over you; you savor the language and give up trying to pull together a logical meaning” I feel like she’s capitulating; that the logical meaning she speaks of is of higher importance than language. I’m not arguing for aesthetics, I’m arguing for intuition and all the other ways into some level of meaning besides the logical. There are so many levels of experience to be had by a great book that getting at some meaning as perceived by critics or academics or ticking off known references in your head doesn’t have to be a part of your interpretation.

I once read William H. Gass’s novella Cartesian Sonata. While reading I kept asking myself what I was doing there. I hated it because it didn’t make sense to me. My wife asked me what it was about (probably after I complained to her, which I often do about books I’m reading as though they’re some difficult girlfriend) and I began to tell her the story line for no other purpose than to impress her with how oblique it was. To my surprise, I seemed to remember everything as I recounted the story and was so amused by it that I immediately picked up the book again, even re-reading it and found what seemed to be a totally different book than the first time. Cartesian Sonata isn’t the most difficult book in the world, but this experience told me a lot about reading over my head.

Reading aloud (even from my summarizing mind) brought the text to life in a way that merely thinking about it did not (I’m a huge proponent of reading and writing aloud and do it often). Maybe in the way we see something better by not looking directly at it, the process of listening or focusing on the reading itself (well enough to speak it) does indeed get us a little closer to meaning at least at a non-literal level, or if nothing else more comfortable so that our interpretations might stand a better chance of being open; this is certainly a lesson learned in poetry.

Reading Ulysses the first time (the only time cover-to-cover) I sometimes felt like Ivan Denisovich lifting that last brick. It’s difficult, and not only that, the first few chapters are deceptively easy so by the time you realize how hard it is, you’re vested. I did all the things anyone would do, reading all the books around Ulysses, like the standard Gilbert study putting the novel into its supposed Homeric context, Kenner’s introduction, some other critical companion that included Derrida’s “Hear say yes in Joyce” (far more confusing to me than the text it was about), and Anthony Burgess’s delightful Re Joyce.

In short I was Joyce obsessed for a while all to the end of reading the novel. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, it wasn’t until I started going to Bloomsday on Broadway and listening to Ulysses that I started to enjoy it and finally it seemed to make great sense to me with further readings. Indeed, listening to Joyce reading an excerpt from Finnegans Wake, it seems clear to me how important the sound of language was to him. In fact, one book said to be prominent in Joyce’s thinking was Saintsbury’s A History of English Prose Rhythm.

Ulysses is an amusement park of reference, long and difficult, canonical, culturally significant and widely read, but by the time Ulysses reaches its 100 year anniversary in 2022 readers may have very little direct experience with the text itself unadorned by hyperlinks (a term sure to be replaced by something more relevant). While I read criticism, sometimes extending into academic texts (say, for example, to the degree found in Cambridge’s Companion series, which are merely surveys but fascinating for a non-specialist), I think it’s a mistake to think because the references exist, or, let’s say, the component parts of a book can be unveiled, that doing so will increase our appreciation. Meaning is not the end.

comments

..."we are rightly beguiled out of our knowingness by the power of language.

“This wonder is contingent not on a recovery of ignorance, as if such a thing were possible, but on the recognition that knowledge is beside the point.”

~ James Longenbach, The Resistance to Poetry

(I think you’d really enjoy this one.)

    – amcorrea (10/22  at  07:54 PM)

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: October 18, 2007
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

Tags: William H. Gass

• Comments:1
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